In 2000-01, team struggled in games there

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, August 8, 2007

The Seahawks weren't exactly returning to the scene of their prime Wednesday morning, when they held an open-to-the-public training camp practice at the site where the team played its games in 2000 and 2001 while Qwest Field was being built where the imploded Kingdome once stood.

"I've kind of erased this from my memory," Hasselbeck said after practice.

Now that had to take some serious scrubbing.

During his first home start for the Seahawks, in the second game of the 2001 season, the blitz-happy Philadelphia Eagles treated Hasselbeck like a human pinball. He was sacked a career-high seven times. The Eagles won, 27-3, and many of the fans who stayed until the bitter end did so just to vent their frustration at coach Mike Holmgren and his handpicked passer.

"We weren't a very good team and I wasn't a very good player, and it probably showed," Hasselbeck said. "We had a lot of stuff working against us."

In 2000, Holmgren tried to replace quarterback Jon Kitna with Brock Huard -- twice, only to have Huard get injured each time. The running game also was in transition, after the selection of Shaun Alexander in the first round of the draft despite the presence of Ricky Watters. An aging defense ranked 31st in the league.

"If you remember, during that time we were still trying to figure out who was going to be quarterback," Holmgren said after practice. "We had some older fellas on the team that probably did not buy into my program, to be honest. And that happens.

"I think we are quite different now than we were then."

For one thing, the Seahawks have their own state-of-the-art-stadium -- one of the best and loudest in the league.

"This is one of the best venues in all of college sports to play a game," Hasselbeck said, while giving a quick but encompassing scan of Husky Stadium. "But when we were here, when they were letting us borrow their field on Sundays, it had that feel like there was a really big game the day before here.

"Like this was the second-best game going on," he added. "Maybe the third, if Bellevue and Eastlake (high schools) are playing."

Then Hasselbeck offered what definitely was a smile, with no hint of a cringe.

"It was much more fun today," he said.

Being cheered at every completion by a crowd of approximately 1,200 will do that. So will being the three-time defending NFC West champions, after those 6-10 and 9-7 seasons in 2000 and 2001.

"I remember it well, and that transition was hard," Holmgren said of the bad days. "But it really allowed us to be the team and organization that we are today.

"The culture of winning and expecting to win, being in the playoffs and challenging for the championship, those types of things had to be learned," he said. "I think our time here in those years, that's what we were doing."